Debugging on iOS Simulator with Proxyman!

As soon as you download the latest version from https://proxyman.io and install successfully, your network traffic would show up immediately inside the Proxyman window, separated into three main areas:

The Source List on the left panel

The Flow List on the middle panel

The Flow Content on the right panel

What we want here is to intercept HTTP/ HTTPs requests coming from the Simulator, and see the content of these requests’ responses.

I/ Install Certificate on iOS Simulator

To intercept HTTP/ HTTPs requests coming from the Simulator, there are a few steps need being setup:

Reset iOS Simulator
Fortunately, the iOS Simulator Setup Guide is designed to help us simplify these manual work. On the Tab bar menu, select Certificate -> Install Certificate on iOS Simulators.

Select Certificate -> Install Certificate on iOS Simulators

Then the iOS Simulator Setup Guide would show up to walk us through these steps

First, click on button “Install Root Certificate” (For those who have installed Proxyman CA, you would see the button already appeared as Installed & Trusted)

Click on button “Install Root Certificate”

Next, click on button Install to iOS Simulators. This will install the Proxyman Root Certificate into all of your iOS Simulators so that you could see the incoming responses

Click on button Install to iOS Simulators

Finally, click on button “Reset iOS Simulators” and all of web traffic from your Simulator would now be sent from Proxyman

Click on button “Reset iOS Simulator”

With these simple clicks, everything is all set. It’s time to start debugging!

II/ Start debugging on iOS Simulator

1. Search and Pin a project

Start with Command + Shift + F to quickly search your app name, then right click to pin the app. You can also Drag/Drop your app toward Pin Section. This will set other apps and domains aside and help you focus only on your work.

Use Command + Shift + F for quick search your Simulator

Right click the app to pin

2. Enable SSL Proxy to see requests/responses content

At this step, you are able to see URLs coming, but when double-click the URL, the content does not show up as it is still encrypted. Just click to enable SSL Proxy so that the response content could be decrypted. You can either select “Enable only this domain” or “Enable all domain from your app”

Enable SSL Proxy then Resend the Request to see content

Resend the request and “Voilà!”- Response content would show up as soon as SSL Proxy is enabled

Response content shows up when SSL Proxy is enabled

3. Customize The Flow Content

Since the newest version of Proxyman, you could toggle to switch between Horizontal and Vertical layout and customize your workplace.

Horizontal layout

Vertical layout

Another Proxyman tips is to use drop-down button to select a particular content format such as Tree View or JSON. Proxyman also auto-detect your Edit tools so that you can quickly open such a tool like Sublime to edit current responses.

Use Drop-down button to select content format (JSON, Tree View,…)

What’s next?

That’s how you access SSL websites on your Simulators with Proxyman. For those who are interested in debugging on iOS devices, please take a look into our previous blog.

We also plan to bring more of the features that you’ve requests over the upcoming months, so watch this space for more announcements.

Happy debugging!

Proxyman is a high-performance macOS app, which enables developers to view HTTP/HTTPS requests from apps and domains on iOS device, iOS Simulator and Android devices. Get it at https://proxyman.io/